Judith Fox explores how we live on after losing a life partner

As a writer and photographer, Judith Fox finds herself drawn to stories of resilience. Her first coffee-table book, “I Still Do,” is about living with Alzheimer’s. Her newest, “One Foot Forward,” is about men and women dealing with widowhood.

She lives in La Jolla.

Q: How is it that you’ve come to do books on subjects that many people are uncomfortable talking about?

A: Well, unfortunately, I have experience both as a widow (her first husband died when she was 50) and as a caregiver for someone with Alzheimer’s (her second husband was diagnosed about 15 years ago). So it’s a way for me to immerse myself in subjects that I’m thinking about anyway and that I know are universal. I recognize how isolating these experiences can be. I struggled with both of them. I guess the answer is it’s both selfish and selfless when I create these books. It’s an opportunity to help others while helping myself.

Q: What did you learn in doing the new book?

A: I think it’s less that I learned things and more that things were reinforced for me. For example, and this is very practical: that the right support group can be an amazing gift and help in the healing process. But mostly I was reminded that there are extraordinary stories all around us that we don’t often get to hear.

Q: You write in the introduction about the power and solace of stories. What do you find powerful and comforting about them?

A: I’m one of those people and I suspect there are many of us who grew up with stories. I remember books from the time I remember anything. So stories have always been comforting to me, and I think that as human beings we are hard-wired to tell and want to hear stories.

We all have a need to talk about and share our most profound moments. Doing the book reminded me of how fragile life is. We all know that, and we all know death is a certainty, but most of us don’t want to deal with that. It reminded me too how resilient human beings are. We want to survive and we want to thrive and despite the pain we’re going to find a way, most of us, to make that happen.

Q: How did the new book come about?

A: I’ve been experiencing anticipatory grief basically since (her husband) Ed was diagnosed. He’s gotten worse as one does when they have Alzheimer’s, and he’s closer to the end of his life, and I started thinking more and more about what I would be dealing with. I knew how painful it could be to be widowed again.

Q: How did you find the 20 people you feature in “One Foot Forward”?

A: That was really interesting because initially I thought it was going to be a challenge. I really thought I was going to have to essentially travel all over the world, or at least the country, to find people who were willing to candidly discuss some of the stories I knew I wanted to cover. But I was able to find almost everybody here in Southern California and most of them in San Diego. The biggest challenges were in finding a young widow with small children, and a recent military widow.

Q: It sounds as if you had specific criteria in mind.

A: I did. I really wanted to balance out ages — people who were young, people who were middle age, people who were old. I wanted people who were straight, people who were gay. Men, women, people of different ethnicities and cultures because I knew that hadn’t been done. I thought I would personally find it interesting and that others would as well.

Q: Tell me about the process of photographing them. Had you gotten to know them for a while first?

A: No, and that was another very deliberate decision. What I wanted to do was spend a few hours with each person. I recorded the interviews and I photographed them with a hand-held camera while we were talking. I think for maybe the first minute or two, my having a camera in front of my face instead of looking someone in the eye might have been disconcerting, but very, very quickly they and I ignored the camera, forgot that it was there. It was very important to me that the photographs be real — not Photoshopped, not posed. That they be as candid and as honest as the stories, and as the people I was talking to.

Q: I wanted to ask you about photos that aren’t there — no photos of the spouses who died. I found myself as a reader wanting those sometimes, to better gauge in some visual way what had been lost.

A: I really didn’t consider doing it. These are primarily the story of the experiences of the person who survived, and I think anything else would have been distracting. If there had been photographs of spouses, they would have been everything from snapshots to high school yearbook type photos. They really wouldn’t have added anything. And I think they would have taken away what I hope has artistic merit as well.

Q: What is the significance to you of the book’s title?

A: It’s how we go forward into the future after having such a difficult experience and so many losses. Losing someone who is a life partner, anyone you are close to, is a process. Going into a future that’s different from the one we had planned, you do that one step at a time. There was one woman I talked with who when I told her the working title of the book, what she said was her very first step was literally to have to take the step that got her out of bed.

Q: What do you personally get out of doing these books?

A: Oh my goodness, so much. It’s such a gift to me to be able to have projects that I’m passionate about. They help me balance the pain and challenges that come from loving someone in the end stages of Alzheimer’s. There’s nothing better than being immersed in a creative project that engages every part of me. And it’s also the way I’ve always lived my life, whether it’s building and running a company or doing fine-art photography. Whatever it was, that creative process is part of what gets me up in the morning and gets my juices flowing.

My work in some ways is very self-indulgent. I’m really enjoying myself. As difficult as my subject matter is, I consider it a privilege to be able to be doing the work that I am doing and I am so deeply touched by the responses I get from people. Knowing my work is touching other people, and seeing it touch and reach other people — it’s extraordinary to be able to do that.